My Writings. My Thoughts.
Wednesday April 22, 2015
// April 22nd, 2015 // Comments Off on Wednesday April 22, 2015 // Daily News
This ‘really scares me’ about the market: Top trader
Alex Rosenberg | @CNBCAlex
CNBC.com
Even though he tends to be bullish, David Seaburg is starting to get nervous about stocks.
Seaburg, the head of equity sales trading at Cowen, is noticing “a lot of complacency in this tape.”
It’s not that investors are screamingly bullish, in a way that would be reminiscent of stock market bubbles. To the contrary, Seaburg observes that it looks like a “tired market.”
“I really believe that there’s not an expectation we go a lot higher in the near term, but there’s not a real concern that we’re going to fall out of bed, which really scares me,” he said Tuesday in a “Trading Nation” segment.
Investors aren’t buying protection, either, as evidenced by the 31 percent drop in the CBOE Volatility Index this year. And since investors aren’t preparing for much downside, Seaburg frets that a small dip could lead to a major down draft.
“If there is something that sparks a selloff, it could be a lot more exaggerated that people expect,” he said.
On the other hand, technician Rich Ross of Evercore ISI is bullish. He says since market sentiment is not “euphoric,” it shouldn’t be a source of concern.
Further, Ross notes that while the S&P 500 closed Tuesday just 20 points from its all-time closing high, only 54 percent of stocks are above their 50-day moving average. That tells the technician that “there’s still a lot of stocks that can join the party.”
“We’re actually quite constructive on the market,” Ross concludes. “The levels of breadth suggest further upside from here.”
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Today’s Inspiration
Praying God’s Prayers
by Joyce Meyer – posted April 22, 2015
For from of old no one has heard nor perceived by the ear, nor has the eye seen a God besides You, Who works and shows Himself active on behalf of him who [earnestly] waits for Him. Isaiah 64:4
The Holy Spirit will lead us into amazing exploits in prayer if we will simply ask Him what to pray, wait for Him to answer, and then obey. We are unwise if we say we don’t have time to wait on God and allow Him to speak to us and lead us as we pray. We will wait forty-five minutes for a table at a restaurant, but say we do not have time to wait on God. When we wait on God, turning our hearts toward Him for direction, we honor Him. By our willingness to wait He knows that we want His will and that we are dependent upon Him for guidance. We save a lot of time by turning our hearts toward God and waiting on Him. As the verse for today says, God shows Himself active on behalf of those who wait on Him. Start your prayers by simply saying, “I love you Lord and I wait on you for direction in my prayers today.” Then begin to pray what is in your heart rather than what is in your own mind or will. I was recently praying for someone to do a certain thing that I knew they needed to do, but God showed me that I needed to pray for them to develop discipline because the lack of it was affecting many areas of their life. I would have prayed for the one area I saw, but God saw much more deeply than I did.
Another time I was praying for someone concerning some problem behavior that I saw, but God showed me that the root of their problem was self-rejection and that I needed to pray for them to know how much God loved them. You can see that we often pray for what we see, but God will lead us deeper if we will wait on Him.
Tuesday April 21, 2015
// April 21st, 2015 // Comments Off on Tuesday April 21, 2015 // Daily News
David Koch Signals a Favorite: Scott Walker
Nicholas Confessore
Charles G. and David H. Koch, the influential and big-spending conservative donors, appear to have a favorite in the race for the Republican presidential nomination: Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin.
On Monday, at a fund-raising event in Manhattan for the New York State Republican Party, David Koch told donors that he and his brother, who oversee one of the biggest private political organizations in the country, believed that Mr. Walker would be the Republican nominee.
“When the primaries are over and Scott Walker gets the nomination,” Mr. Koch told the crowd, the billionaire brothers would support him, according to a spokeswoman. The remark drew laughter and applause from the audience of fellow donors and Republican activists, who had come to hear Mr. Walker speak earlier at the event, held at the Union League Club.
Two people who attended the event said they heard Mr. Koch go even further, indicating that Mr. Walker should be the Republican nominee. A spokeswoman disputed that wording, saying that Mr. Koch had pledged to remain officially neutral during the primary campaign.
But Mr. Koch’s remark left little doubt among attendees of where his heart is, and could effectively end one of the most closely watched contests in the “invisible primary,” a period where candidates crisscross the country seeking not the support of voters but the blessing of their party’s biggest donors and fund-raisers.
Few donors have been courted as aggressively as the Kochs, whose network of political nonprofits, “super PACs” and like-minded donors plans to spend almost $900 million over the next two years advancing conservative candidates and policies.
Republican presidential contenders including Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey have sought out the men for private meetings in Wichita, Kan., and New York, joined them for rounds of golf, and sought coveted invitations to the brothers’ annual donor conference in Southern California. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky wrote an opinion article for Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” issue last week, praising the two men for their “passion for freedom and their commitment to ideas.”
But the ultimate value of the Kochs’ good will in a Republican primary is difficult to measure.
Mr. Koch’s remarks suggested that the political organizations they oversee — which include Americans for Prosperity, a grass-roots organization, and Freedom Partners, a donor trade group with an affiliated “super PAC” — would not intervene in the Republican primary process on behalf of a single candidate.
But according to the two attendees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely describe the remarks, Mr. Koch suggested that the Koch family might personally offer financial support to Mr. Walker.
In a statement, Mr. Koch described the Wisconsin governor as “terrific,” but said he was not making an endorsement.
“Let me be clear, I am not endorsing or supporting any candidate for president at this point in time,” Mr. Koch said.
Today’s Inspiration
Faith as a Channel, Not a Source
by Joyce Meyer – posted April 21, 2015
My help comes from the Lord, Who made heaven and earth. Psalm 121:2
We need to know about faith. Faith is a wonderful thing. The Bible says that without faith it is impossible to please God (see Hebrews 11:6 KJV). The reason it is so important and so vital is because it is the means through which we receive from God all the good things He wants to provide us. That is why the Lord trains His people in faith. He wants them to get their eyes on Him and learn to believe Him so He can do for and through them what He wants done in the earth. The same is true of prayer, praise, meditation, Bible study, confession, spiritual warfare, and all the other precepts we have been hearing about and engaging in.
But in all our spiritual activity, we must be careful that we don’t start worshiping—adhering to, trusting in and relying on—these things instead of the Lord Himself. It is possible to worship our prayer time, our Bible study, our confession, our meditation, our praise, our good works. It is possible to develop faith in our faith rather than faith in our God. It is almost frightening because there is such a fine line between the two. But the thing we must remember is that as good as all these things are, they are only channels to receiving from the Lord.